NOFO, Eni Norge and Statoil are responsible for this innovative step in the field of Norwegian oil spill protection activities.
"Our aim is that our contingency strategy for the Goliat project shall be robust, effective and adapted to local conditions. This task force is just one of the new components which will guarantee these requirements and raise the level of emergency oil spill preparedness in Finnmark. In other words, now that the task force has been established, and the training of the 40 selected personnel underway, an important piece in our contingency strategy jigsaw is now in place", says Ole Hansen in Eni Norge.
"The level of interest has been overwhelming", says Harald Karlstrøm at Arctic Protection, the company responsible for establishing and running the task force for NOFO. "We could have organised two IGSA task forces staffed with qualified candidates, but right now we only need a team of 40", he says.
130 applicants
The initiative was announced in the Finnmark media in mid-November 2011. "When the deadline ran out on 9 December we had received 130 applications. Several more were sent in after the deadline. The applicants have all been highly motivated", says Karlstrøm.
The idea of the task force was developed by Eni Norge and Statoil in collaboration with NOFO as part of the Goliat project contingency strategy.
In operation from the summer
During the first half of 2012 selected applicants will attend courses and receive special training, and the task force will be fully operative and integrated as part of the contingency apparatus from late summer onward. On 24-25 January, those selected assembled for the first time at a seminar in Hammerfest.
"We have organised a start-up seminar where everyone now entering into an agreement with NOFO met each other and representatives from NOFO and Arctic Protection”, says Karlstrøm. The selected applicants also visited Polarbase to take a look at the equipment they will be using during exercises and real-life responses", he says.
"The task force represents one link in a chain of oil industry initiatives designed to further strengthen Norwegian coastal oil spill contingency strategies. “Arctic Protection has identified some excellent candidates, and we are looking forward to the future work needed to get the task force operational", says NOFO’s Director of Operations, Oddbjørg Greiner.
In the past NOFO has maintained a 60-strong Norwegian “Special Team” made up of individuals with specialist expertise as team leaders, dedicated on-site pollution response supervisors and consultants in the fields of serious pollution incidents, all of whom are capable of providing assistance and solidity to the inter-municipal contingency apparatus organised to deal with responses to coastal and shoreline pollution incidents. The IGSA task force provides NOFO with an additional Norwegian emergency unit who will be able to recover oil from the beaches before the rest of the apparatus is in place.
About the IGSA Emergency Shoreline Task Force (IGSA is a Norwegian acronym for Innsatsgruppe Strand Akutt):
- In emergency situations, the task force will be deployed onsite in motor boats with equipment designed to carry out effective shoreline oil recovery operations.
- The task force is recruited from Finnmark and will also be available for emergency mobilisation in other areas along the Norwegian coast.
- Task force members receive a fixed annual fee and additional payments for the hours spent carrying out active duties.
- The idea of the task force was developed by Eni Norge and Statoil in collaboration with NOFO, and is part of the Goliat project contingency strategy.
- Establishment of the task force has been carried out jointly by NOFO and Arctic Protection AS. Arctic Protection AS shall also assume permanent responsibility for mobilisation, and for maintaining the task force as a round-the-clock operative unit.